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The Hidden Danger of Big Data

With big data, we can multiply our options and filter out things we don’t want to see. But there is much to be said for making discoveries through pure serendipity: contingency and randomness often furnish the transformational or counterintuitive ideas that propel humanity forward.

CAMBRIDGE – In game theory, the “price of anarchy” describes how individuals acting in their own self-interest within a larger system tend to reduce that larger system’s efficiency. It is a ubiquitous phenomenon, one that almost all of us confront, in some form, on a regular basis.

For example, if you are a city planner in charge of traffic management, there are two ways you can address traffic flows in your city. Generally, a centralized, top-down approach – one that comprehends the entire system, identifies choke points, and makes changes to eliminate them – will be more efficient than simply letting individual drivers make their own choices on the road, with the assumption that these choices, in aggregate, will lead to an acceptable outcome. The first approach reduces the cost of anarchy and makes better use of all available information.

The world today is awash in data. In 2015, mankind produced as much information as was created in all previous years of human civilization. Every time we send a message, make a call, or complete a transaction, we leave digital traces. We are quickly approaching what Italian writer Italo Calvino presciently called the “memory of the world”: a full digital copy of our physical universe.

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Insightful article on the how Big Data and it's centralised analysis is a danger to innovation and democracy.

But the article fails to look into why the age of Internet of Things leads to Big Data and it's centralised analysis. I think the reason is our current social structures are modeled based on top down hierarchical structure of capitalism. The Big Data phenomenon is just an extension of this hierarchical system. Marx famously pointed out the relations of production is the ultimate basis of all other social structures and all other systems in a society will be an extension of that. I think that is essentially true. So the current use of Big Data is nothing but an extension of hierarchical structure of our capitalist society. Now if we want more innovation and democracy (I think they are essential for the survival of human race) we need to dismantle the fundamental hierarchy of capitalism in our society.

Big Data isn't about algorithms, that's the old thinking on structured data and centralized computing.

Big Data is about facilitating intelligence, in most cases human intelligence, that's why the development of the visualization tools, giving meaning to data, not creating dumb data bases. And in that sense, Big Data can facilitate or hinder serendipity, depends on the analyst.

Also there is much to be said about the ability of systems to think…. Is that even possible? Any system behavior must account for different individual reactions, so maximizing your own profits and free ridding behaviors are part of the system.

similar considerations may apply to the use of bibliometric data to evaluate the scientific research and the allocation of funding. This system automatically expands defined areas of research and sterilizes the birth of new projects for which is difficult publish successfully because it is not convenient to individual researchers to start news research whIle it is convenient to publish many articles in area studied by many researcher in order to collect many citation. These are the rules imposed by the bibliometrical based System.
Publications of articles which show exceptional results, results which not infrequently are difficult to replicate or false, but that are the expected results, is frequent. This kind of paperl have often great visibility on important magazines.

A certain degree of decentralization is essential for maintaining diversity and fostering creativity. But complete decentralization is a recipe for disaster as well, especially when faced with crisis that requires collective response. The way to increase efficiency without taking away the individuals' initiative is to share information more widely, so that each individual can optimize based on improved access to information.

Anything that is big, albeit a bank (for data or other services), or anything else is a danger not only to its own survival but to its surroundings as well. All big tech firms have breached every rule in the book and they got away with it unharmed because they managed to infiltrate and control central governments. I agree with the authors of this article, decentralisation of everything is the answer, but will the 1% ever accept to have their authority diluted?

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